8. Sin Bin #2
Connor: “she’s not wrong. you’re a character”
Connor: “thursday. if you want.”
Caleb: “Thursday.”
He was still annoyed during Thursday’s practice, if only a little. He decided this was fair and took it onto the ice with him.
Connor felt it and Caleb could tell by the way he adjusted, attention sharpening. Caleb didn’t make it easy for him. He played harder than he needed to and took risks that were technically sound and had nothing to do with hockey.
Connor pushed back. Not harshly. He didn’t have that gear. But he matched Caleb’s intensity and raised it. They skated harder, edges cutting, until the drills started to reorganize around them without anyone saying so.
They were playing opposite each other in a scrimmage when Caleb made a move he hadn’t planned: a sharp cut to the inside, the kind of thing that only worked if the defender didn’t expect it.
And Connor most certainly didn’t expect it.
Caleb was through the gap with the puck and a clear look at the net before Connor had finished turning.
He put it in clean.
He didn’t look at Connor. He skated back to position, kept his face neutral, and chose not to listen to Kowalski muttering from the bench.
Connor skated up beside him for the next faceoff and stayed close through the reset. Then he said, low enough that it was only for Caleb: “Where did that come from.”
Not a question. More like a man reassessing an old conclusion.
“I’ve been practicing,” Caleb said. “Alone.”
Connor’s attention sharpened. Caleb held steady, which was new. Connor registered that too; the corner of his mouth almost lifted.
“Yeah,” Connor said. “You have.”
He dropped the puck again and they went back to work.
The weeks that followed were the hardest hockey had ever been and the most Caleb had ever improved.
Connor pushed harder, not harshly, but with greater precision. The drills got more demanding. The corrections got more specific. You’re cheating off the wall. Your first pivot’s a tenth of a second slow. You’re reading the play from your feet, not your hips. Get your hips into the read.
Caleb’s body hurt in new places, but he got faster. He stopped rushing the plays he had rushed when he started, and the ice opened up in front of him in ways it hadn’t before, lanes he’d been missing because he hadn’t trusted himself to follow his instincts.
One Thursday, Caleb caught Bryce watching. The grin was gone. Then he glanced over at Connor, just for a second, his brows knit. Whether he had understood anything or merely noticed the strain between them, Caleb couldn’t tell. Whatever the case, Bryce didn’t say anything.
Later, coming off a line change, Caleb caught a few words from Bryce to Kowalski, low and offhand: “Kid’s got no business being that hard to read. Just… wow.” Kowalski didn’t answer. He didn’t need to either.
The man stood at the back of the arena near the Zamboni doors, watching quietly but intently.
Caleb noticed him in the second half of the scrimmage: a solid man in his fifties with close-cropped grey hair and a weathered face that contrasted with his moderately expensive, if poorly fitted, suit.
He held a coffee and drank it slowly, eyes moving across the ice like he knew what he was looking for.
Kowalski noticed him too. Caleb could tell by the way his game shifted slightly.
After the scrimmage, Connor skated toward the Zamboni doors.
Caleb watched him stop. The man’s face changed when he saw Connor coming, and they shook hands with the ease of people who had a history.
They talked for several minutes. Twice the man glanced out at the ice where Caleb was still skating slow laps.
On the second glance, he spoke to Connor.
Connor found Caleb’s eye and waved him over.
The man’s name was Frank Desjardins. He coached the Thunder Bay Northeasterners, a senior amateur team in a higher-level regional league.
Not a sure path to the NHL, not even close, but faster, more demanding hockey and a genuine step up from the Veil Lake Prospectors.
He’d been following the regional game for thirty years, he said.
“I’ve been watching Connor here since he came back from Ottawa,” Frank said. He said it easily, no pressure in it. “Kept hoping he’d decide he wanted more. He keeps deciding he doesn’t. Tried to tell me he’s too old. That’ll be true soon enough, but it’s not the case now.”
“I’ve got reasons,” Connor said. The levelness of it, the lack of defence.
“I know you do.” Frank turned to Caleb. “Where’d you play before this?”
“Pond hockey,” Caleb said. “Pickup. This is my first organized league.”
Frank glanced at Connor, incredulous.
“I know,” Connor said.
“That cut in the scrimmage,” Frank said, back to Caleb. “The inside move. You planned that?”
“Not exactly.”
“Instinct?”
“I knew he’d be expecting the outside.”
Frank nodded slowly, with an expression that was both impressed and somewhat baffled. “How long have you been here in Veil Lake?”
“Not long.”
Frank held Connor’s eye again, his amusement gone. “You’re serious,” he said.
“It’s true,” Connor confirmed. His voice stayed level, but the pride underneath it was unmistakable.
Frank finished his coffee. “Come down to the Sin Bin after practice,” he said. “My treat. I want to have a chat with you. Both of you.”
Maya raised an eyebrow when the three of them came in, the eyebrow she reserved for situations requiring silent commentary. Caleb gave her a look that said later, and she gave him one that said obviously, then went to get menus nobody was going to use.
Kowalski was already at a corner table with Pete and Marc, and he tracked their entrance with the radar of a man who didn’t miss a thing. Caleb nodded. Kowalski nodded back and murmured to Pete, who looked over too.